


long hair don't care

by thisstableground



Series: ITH main timeline [2]
Category: In the Heights - Miranda/Hudes
Genre: Abuela is Everyone's Abuela, Child Neglect, Families of Choice, Gen, I Just Want Vanessa To Have All The Love She Deserves Okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22395121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: 6-year-old Vanessa is spending the weekend at Abuela Claudia's, and they're in a little bit of a tangle.
Series: ITH main timeline [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1070721
Comments: 24
Kudos: 51





	long hair don't care

**Author's Note:**

> LET VANESSA HAVE POSITIVE FEMALE ROLE MODELS 2K20

The only instructions Naomi Garcia gives, when she drops Vanessa off at Claudia’s apartment is, “she’s got a coloring book, she can pretty much just look after herself. Do _not_ take her to the Rosarios. I’ll pick her up on Sunday.”

Vanessa stands there mutely, in her pink backpack and smudgy-kneed overalls and, despite the mid-April warmth, a woolly winter hat with a bobble on. She’s clutching her coloring book like she’s ready to beat someone to death with it. Claudia gives her an encouraging smile as her mom leaves and says, “it’s good to have you here, Vanessa!”

“I ain’t see why I can’t go play with Nina just ‘cause our moms is fighting about dumb boring mom stuff,” Vanessa says, scowling. “I’m still gonna be friends with her no matter what they say.”

She gives Claudia a challenging look, as if to say, _and you aren’t going to stop me._ Claudia just says, “ ¡Bueno! So what do you want to do today?”

“I want to go to Nina’s.”

 _It’s going to be a long weekend_ , Claudia thinks.

***

Much as Claudia agrees with Vanessa that a fight between parents shouldn’t get in the way of children’s friendship, she’s loathe to directly ignore one of the few direct instructions given by Vanessa’s mom. On realizing she isn’t going to get her way, Vanessa slouches off to a corner of the living room floor and quietly colors in while Claudia goes about her usual morning cleaning, feeling faintly stumped.

This is so strange in comparison to Usnavi, who always thunders right in as though he owns the place, or Nina who always stays firmly by Claudia’s side the entire time she’s there. From the time she’s spent with both Nina and Vanessa together, Claudia knows that Vanessa is a very headstrong young lady, usually far more boisterous than this – bossy, even, always taking the lead while Nina follows her around admiringly. But on her own, Vanessa is silent, hidden down behind the side of the couch and only speaking up to say “no, I’m fine” whenever Claudia offers her a drink or asks if she wants to watch la television.

Her short, terse answers are bordering on what might be called rude, but when Claudia asks if Vanessa’s hungry and Vanessa hesitates, looking hunted for a long moment before ducking her head back down very close to the page, scribbling intensely without giving an answer, she realizes that perhaps Vanessa is _shy_. It has, after all, been many years since Claudia looked after her alone without Nina there too, not since the girls were toddlers, and it is much easier to be brave and bossy with a good friend there.

“I haven’t had my breakfast today,” Claudia lies. “I was going to get myself some food, if you wanted to share?”

“…I guess maybe I’m a _little_ bit hungry,” Vanessa concedes.

“We will make something together, then.” Claudia says, then spots all the felt tip pen smudges on Vanessa’s hands, and the dirt under her bitten-short fingernails, and adds as they walk to the kitchen, “but first nos laveremos las manos.”

She pushes a chair up next to the kitchen sink so that Vanessa can reach. Vanessa sticks her hands quickly under the water then wipes them off on her overalls, still inkstained and dirty.

“No, no, con jabón.” Claudia rinses her own hands and lathers the bar of soap between them, more thoroughly than she usually would so that Vanessa can see what she’s doing. “Like this, see?”

“I _know_!” Vanessa snaps, but she watches Claudia and copies carefully anyway, every movement mimicked exactly.

When she’s done, Claudia moves the chair over to the counter for her, sets a cutting board and knife down ready, then rummages through the disorganized cupboards looking past long-expired half-empty jars of pickles and sauces and preserves for the ingredients she needs. She really needs to tidy up in here but somehow it’s so hard to bring herself to throw anything away. “Ay, ¿dónde está? I’m sure I had una cebolla here somewhere…”

“What we makin’?” Vanessa asks, climbing up onto the chair. She picks up the knife and examines it, sharp end very close to her face. Claudia swiftly takes it out of her hands. “Hey!”

“We’re having arroz con pollo.” Claudia puts the knife safely out of Vanessa’s reach and finally locates an onion nestled in with the bananas and mango in the fruit bowl.

“I usually have peanut butter jelly sandwiches,” Vanessa tells her. “They’re easiest to make.”

“You make your own lunch?”

“Uh-huh! I do it all the time when Mommy isn’t home.”

“Oh, vaya, that’s very grown up.”

Vanessa beams proudly and Claudia smiles at her, but in her heart she didn’t mean that as a compliment: Vanessa has barely been six for a month. She’s so young to be spending any time at home alone, never mind feeding herself while she’s there. Perhaps it would have been less surprising back in Claudia’s day when children were far more independent far younger, but Claudia thinks that there are many things in her day that she’s glad have gone out of fashion now.

But she says nothing of it, only shows Vanessa how to measure out enough rice and rinse it so that it doesn’t all stick together when it cooking, lets her open the little glass jars of spices and sniff each of them individually. Vanessa follows along with an unexpected focus, like she’s trying to memorize every instruction for herself.

With the air conditioning barely functioning as ever, Claudia’s apartment is small and stuffy, especially on a day like this. By the time the pot is full and bubbling away on the stove and it’s time to clean up, Vanessa’s cheeks are bright pink from the heat.

Claudia says, “aquí, why don’t you take that hat off,” and with the unconscious familiarity she’d show for Usnavi or Nina, plucks the bobble hat off Vanessa’s head. 

Vanessa shrieks, and Claudia sees instantly that she isn’t wearing it just out of one of those odd childish whims like she’d assumed: her hair is an absolute rat’s nest, not just messy from playing but hopelessly tangled and sweaty like it hasn’t been washed or brushed in weeks.

“No! Give it back!” Vanessa shouts. She stamps her foot on the chair and leans over on tiptoes making a grab for the hat. Hurriedly, Claudia hands it back before she overbalances and lands right on the stove. In a split-second Vanessa has jammed it back on her head, jumped to the ground and bolted out of the kitchen, the door to Claudia’s bedroom slamming shortly after. When Claudia follows and knocks on the door, she yells, “go away! Leave me alone!”

Claudia taps her fingers against the doorframe and purses her lips. Dealing with Vanessa, she thinks, is very, _very_ different from dealing with the children she’s used to. If Nina has ever raised her voice in her life than Claudia wasn’t there to see it. Usnavi wouldn’t even think to be embarrassed about something like messy hair in the first place: the boy would be a walking mud puddle if his parents didn’t intervene.

Hm. Maybe that’s a point. She leaves Vanessa to calm down on her own while she goes to call Camila and find out exactly why it is that Naomi doesn’t want Vanessa going to visit.

The second she mentions Naomi’s name, Camila makes a squawkingly aggravated noise down the phone and says, “ay, do _not_ get me started on that woman. She sends her daughter round here practically every day and we feed her and look after her for free and what thanks do we get? She should learn to take good advice when she’s given it.”

“What kind of advice?” Claudia asks, and then because she knows Camila very well, “and how did you give it?”

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Claudia, but it was justified. I see enough of what goes on there to know that she isn’t fit to be a mother. It’s no wonder the girl is growing up half-wild.”

 _“Camila_!” Claudia scolds. “No es justo, Naomi is still very young herself, she is only trying her best with what she’s got.”

“Ha! If that’s what you call trying I’d hate to see what happens when she stops. The amount of times Vanessa’s complained about having a headache here because nobody ever taught her you need to drink water and eat during the day? El otro día she says she can’t pick Vanessa up from our place so ‘just let her walk home by herself’! I ask you, at _her_ age? In this neighborhood? And then I try to talk to Naomi about it and she calls me interfering!”

Claudia makes a sympathetic _tsk_ noise.

“She might have been young when she had her but she’s an adult now, she has responsibilities,” Camila says firmly. “If she’d rather have her own pride than listen to me, well, I wash my hands of the whole thing.”

 _It’s all very well to say that from the outside_ , Claudia thinks as she hangs up, as much to herself as to Camila. She’s always felt for Naomi, who moved here with nothing but a teenage pregnancy and that waste of space she called a husband - what a man of his age was doing with a girl barely out of childhood herself, honestamente – and whose fierce pride and broken heart and sharp temper made it very, very hard to get along with her for very long. But as young as Naomi is, Vanessa’s even younger and where does all of this leave her, this odd, stubborn half-wild half-adult child, who already makes her own lunch and walks herself home from school the days her mother forgets to pick her up but was never taught how to wash her hands or brush her own hair properly?

The bedroom door is still closed when Claudia returns to it. She knocks but lets herself in without waiting for an answer. Vanessa is sitting on the floor by the bed hugging her knees, looking furious and ashamed. With some difficulty because her knees aren’t what they used to be, Claudia sits on the floor beside her.

“Don’t want it brushed,” Vanessa mutters sullenly, and scuffs her fingertips against the floor, picking at the fake wood-effect linoleum.

“¿Por qué no?”

“Mommy used to brush it and she always pulls too hard, and I said _ow_ and she told me to stop being a baby but then I told her it hurts and she got mad and said if I know so much about everything I can just do it by myself.” Vanessa gives a heavy, put-upon sigh. “And I tried but it’s too _tangly_. Anyhow, it’s just hair. Why’s it matter if it’s messy?

“Because if you leave it like that then eventually birds will start living in it.”

Obstinately, Vanessa says, “maybe I _want_ birds to live in it.”

“Perhaps you do,” Claudia says, “but then they will sing all day and wake you up so, so early en la mañana.”

She makes cheepy bird noises, her fingers tapping against her thumbs like little cawing beaks all around Vanessa’s ears until Vanessa starts laughing then immediately looks outraged about it.

“Can I try to help? I promise not to pull it,” Claudia swears. Vanessa gives her a suspicious look but then relents and takes the hat off. It looks even worse up close. Claudia does her best not to react but Vanessa seems to have picked up on it because she bunches her shoulders up so high they almost hit her ears and stays like until Claudia tries to gently finger-comb it out. She barely touches her before Vanessa hisses and goes “ _owww!”_ in a high-pitched whine.

“Lo siento,” Claudia says, though she knows it couldn’t really have hurt.

“I told you, it’s too tangly,” Vanessa says, with an edge to her voice that means _I am on the verge of hysteria_. “I already tried to brush it but it won’t _work_!”

“What if we call the ladies at the salon and ask what they think? Daniela will know how to fix it, I’m sure.”

“She’ll laugh at me.”

“I’ll tell her off if she does.”

That makes Vanessa pause. “You’d tell _Dani_ off?”

“Believe it or not, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Vanessa says, “don’t tell her it’s about me?”, something so pitiful and pleading about it that Claudia wants to hug her. She resists the urge and says, “our secret” and with Vanessa’s nod of permission, calls up the salon.

“I have a very young friend here with very tangly hair,” she informs Dani. “Un cepillo will not work. ¿Qué hacemos?

Dani says, “I told Rosa that next time Usnavi gets gum stuck in it she should just bring him here straight away.”

“No, not Usnavi. And nothing is stuck, it is just…ah, descuidado.”

“Oh,” Dani says, suddenly serious and sighing. “It’s Vanessa, isn’t it?”

Claudia makes a noncommittal sound: Dani is closest of all of them to Naomi, and she suspects probably could give her more of an insight into the Garcia family than anyone, but she did make a promise. There’s a muffled noise of Dani covering the handset and talking to someone for a second and then she says, “Carla says to work a lot of conditioner into it and comb it through, starting at the bottom.”

“Will that work?”

“It’s worked before for some little problemas,” Dani says. “But if her hair’s that bad it might take more time than it’s worth. Sometimes the only thing to do really is to cut it all off and start again. Do you want to bring her in and we’ll have a look and see how much we can salvage? Sin cargo.”

“No, no, we’ll try the conditioner first, gracias. Give Carla my love.” Claudia isn’t going to make Vanessa go and have all her hair cut off if she can help it. And so they eat their arroz con pollo and then afterwards, she gathers everything and has Vanessa sit on a kitchen chair with a towel round her shoulders, and gets to work with a comb and a bottle of conditioner. She does her best to keep up chatter to cheer up a morose-looking Vanessa, but with very little in the way of responses and such a long task ahead, Claudia eventually just concentrates on what she’s doing, making slow, slow progress.

After about ten minutes, there’s a quiet sniff from the little figure in the chair, and then another one. Claudia stops what she’s doing and leans round to see that Vanessa looks seconds away from crying. “¿Esto duele?”

“No,” Vanessa mumbles.

“What’s wrong?

Vanessa just shakes her head, staring at the floor with a crumpled brow and tears in her eyes, and though it may be overfamiliar, Claudia’s years of instinct immediately demand that she pull Vanessa into a tight hug – how could she possibly do anything else? With no noise but one tiny, miserable whimper of breath, Vanessa starts crying silently but hard, face against Claudia’s shoulder.

“Ah, pobrecita, I know,” Claudia murmurs, strokes Vanessa’s hair as best she can, her hand sliding over the gloss of conditioner. She might not know Vanessa quite as well as some of her other children but one thing she’s certain is that she’s a proud, independent little thing. This must be mortifying for her. There seems no good way to say to her that it isn’t her fault, that there are many small but crucial things in life that she should be taught to do, not left alone to figure out, and that this is probably only one of many. Telling her that won’t fix anything. But it does remind Claudia of a far-off and absurd memory. She moves Vanessa off her shoulder, still holding her by the arms and says, “when I was una niñita, we used to curl our hair with strips of newspaper.”

Vanessa frowns at her. She’s already stopped crying, wiping her face on the towel round her neck. “Huh?”

“You’d take un pedazo de periódico in your hand and put your hair around it like this – “ she makes a wrapping motion in the air, “and leave it to dry en la noche, and you wake up with beautiful curls. My mama used to do it for me, but one day when I was a little older than you, she was not feeling well and so I tried to do it myself. I thought, it cannot be so hard, if she does it all the time, and so I wrapped all my hair in newspaper and I went to bed, and you know what?”

“What?”

“It looked _terrible,”_ she says. “At the front, too many curls, like the wig of a clown! But at the back, where I could not reach properly, all the paper had come out and so it was not curled at all. Can you imagine?” She gestures down her back as though long straight locks are still there, then holds her hands up at the front mimicking the explosion of badly-curled ringlets.

Vanessa giggles at the image. “That sounds silly _.”_

“It was,” Claudia confirms. “And in those days we did not have a shower and so I couldn’t wash it out so easily. I tried to get it wet and make it lie flat but it only made it look worse, and because Mama was sick I had to go out and run all the errands with my hair so crazy.”

“Oh noooo,” Vanessa says, hands over her mouth, utterly invested in the story. “What did you do?”

“Well, first I cried very, very hard,”Claudia says, remembering it with a smile because it seems like such a small thing to be so upset over now. “And I wore una bufanda around my head, because I thought everyone would laugh at me. And even when I went in to see my Mama in bed I wore la bufanda because I was so embarrassed that i did it so wrong. And she did laugh, when I told her what had happened, but then when she was better she showed me how to do it right, and I still curl my hair that way to this day.” She pats her neat, pinned-back rolls of rapidly-greying curls.

“My mommy wouldn’t do that,” Vanessa says. “She’d just get mad at me for doing it wrong.”

“Maybe,” Claudia says, because it seems even harsher to lie about it, “but _I_ never would, if you ever need somebody to tell you how to fix a problem. It’s okay if you get it wrong for a while. Many things take a lot of practice and a lot of patience.”

Vanessa mulls it over, then gives a very solemn nod and sniffs hard one last time. “Okay. We can carry on now.”

Daniela was right: the whole process takes well over an hour, and they have to move to the couch so that Claudia can sit down halfway through, but what of it? Claudia’s got plenty of time to spare in her retirement and, she reflects a little sadly, it has probably been a long, long while since anyone paid Vanessa this much attention.

All worth it in the end, when she announces that they are finished, and Vanessa touches her own hair with her eyes lighting up. “You did it!” she gasps, as though Claudia had performed a miracle. “You fixed it!”

“We still need to rinse all the conditioner out.” Claudia hesitates about that: if it were Usnavi or Nina she’d simply throw them in the tub. They’re both getting old enough to be left unsupervised for short moments when they’re in there, but the door is always open, and she always calls reminders to not forget to wash their faces and scrub under their nails. They still need help rinsing out shampoo and climbing out of the bath. Both of them still let her rub one of her old faded-pink towels thoroughly over their hair to dry it, and they still play the game where she covers their whole faces with it and puts her hand there pretending she is going to scrub away their face just as roughly while they shriek in pretend-fear and yell “no, Abuela!”. They’re getting too old for such things, but what are abuelas for if not to baby the grandchildren? They all know that these moments are not forever, and why not hold onto childhood just as long as possible?

But Vanessa probably won’t allow anything like that, already so clearly ashamed of the things about her that speak to the age she really is, and she’s already had enough embarrassment for the day. Claudia spares her the discomfort of asking, instead rinsing her hair tipped upside down over the kitchen sink the way Claudia’s mama used to do for her so many years ago: clean it all off with warm water and then one last jugful of cold to finish. Vanessa hollers loudly at the shock of cool water, but she laughs about it right afterwards.

Later in the living room, when Claudia is reading the newspaper and Vanessa is lying on her belly on the floor with her felt tips, there’s the sound of ripping paper, very slow and quiet like she’s trying not to be heard. Claudia looks up to see Vanessa with a strip torn out of her coloring book, trying to tie it in a knot around her still-damp hair.

She looks sheepish when she sees Claudia watching. “I want it all curly,” she explains. Her hair uncoils itself from around the badly-wrapped strip of paper.

“Would you like me to teach you how?”

“You don’t gotta.”

“I would like to.”

Vanessa hmms, and says, “only if you don’t make it go all crazy at the front, then.”

“I’m much better at it than I used to be.”

Claudia takes the pages of her newspaper she’s finished reading and tears them into strips, and this funny, prickly hedgehog of a girl sits close in front of her, allowing her carefully roll her hair up into twists. Vanessa isn’t silent or sulking now: she’s talking about how she wants her hair to look like Nina’s because Nina has the most beautiful hair, and gives a high-pitched bubbling giggle as she recounts Claudia’s story about her own failed paper curls. She sounds just like the six year old she is instead of a tiny, furious adult. Claudia’s back and eyes already ache from bending over and concentrating for so long earlier, but she doesn’t mind pushing through it for this. Some things just need a little patience.


End file.
